By Dave Baumeister
County Correspondent
SIOUX FALLS – In his annual briefing to the county commission on Tuesday, April 19, Minnehaha County Auditor Ben Kyte addressed concerns expressed over how voting actually works here and in South Dakota, in general.
Much of what Kyte spoke about came in response to specific questions from commissioners regarding what Theresa Pesce of Sioux Falls said during public comment.
Pesce has spoken at most of the commission meetings for the past four months on behalf of the South Dakota Canvassing Group, bringing up several issues about “voting irregularities.”
At this meeting, she mainly addressed the tabulation of votes, and how viruses and programs to “favor a count for a particular candidate” can be brought into the process.
In the past, other members of that group have talked about how “anything electronic can be hacked,” and problems with ballot drop boxes.
During public comments, people are allowed to speak, and commissioners very seldom ask any questions or make comments about what is said. However, her comments did fit with the auditor’s briefing later in the meeting.
While Kyte spoke about the various duties of the auditor’s office, voting questions took the most time.
In an answer to questions from Commissioner Jean Bender, Kyte explained the tabulation process, and assured commissioners that there was “no way to hack” the machinery used.
Earlier, Pesce played snippets of videos of politicians referring to problems with “voting machines.” However, voting machines and tabulation equipment are not the same things.
People in the videos referred specifically to “antiquated voting machines,” that would not have proper security features which Pesce and others have warned about in the past.
Kyte referred to South Dakota as being on the “gold standard” for election security.
He explained that ballots are tabulated by a machine, but those machines are never connected to the internet. They simply count “check marks in boxes.”
He further explained that all ballots are accounted for throughout the election process.
The number of ballots given to each precinct is recorded. The number of ballots given out is recorded, and all ballots must be accounted for.
Precinct workers record how many people voted, and that number would have to agree with numbers of ballots cast.
Commissioner Cindy Heiberger asked Kyte to address concerns about paper ballots and counting by hand, as the SD Canvassing Group has called for.
“To make sure a count (by humans) was accurate, we would have to count ballots multiple times,” Kyte said. “We had just under 100,000 votes cast in the last general election, and if each item had 10 questions on it, counting one million responses would be difficult.”
Commissioner Dean Karsky later pointed out that the number of items/races on a primary or general election ballot would probably be closer to 25, putting that number of responses at around 2.5 million.
“Humans can’t focus that well,” Kyte added. “And with those numbers, machines are more accurate.”
Commissioner Jeff Barth expanded on Kyte’s statements by saying, “We already have paper ballots for everyone who votes. There is a record of the names of everyone voting. There is never a batch of ‘anonymous ballots’ that just show up.
“Do we really think it would be better to bring in bozos from off the street that don’t have jobs to count ballots?”
He emphasized the fact that it would be much easier for people with agendas to bring in voter fraud to a hand count-system than it would be in the current system.
But the increased possibility for simple “human error” would probably affect an election more.
Continuing his explanation, Kyte said that after a count, a “thumb drive” is inserted into each of the four tabulating machines, and those are taken to a secure laptop computer, which is also not connected to the Internet, where the results from each drive are compiled.
Those numbers then go to a different computer where they are sent to the South Dakota Secretary of State.
While that final computer is connected to the Internet, should there be a discrepancy, any difference in totals would easily be noticed.
Earlier, Pesce spoke of a cost of over $400,000 for tabulating equipment, but during the auditor’s briefing, Commissioner Gerald Beninga, who serves as a liaison to the auditor’s office, said that most of the money for the machines was a one-time expense, and that funds for that come from federal grants, and not from county coffers.
Kyte and the commissioners did add that currently, the average cost for workers in an election is $50,000. Adding the amount of people to hand count two and a half million items multiple times, and get it done in short period, would be much more expensive than $400,000.
The next meeting of the county commission will be at 9 a.m. Tuesday, April 26, on the second floor of the Minnehaha County Administration Building at 6th and Minnesota in Sioux Falls.
